


If the Creek Don't Rise

by cerealbaths (timelordangel)



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Rabbit Lightning - Freeform, a little thing with my favorite duo, light kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24009184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timelordangel/pseuds/cerealbaths
Summary: Somewhere in Tennessee, 2004.Redd's always moving on, Lohn's always wishing they could stay put for a while.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	If the Creek Don't Rise

**Author's Note:**

> I read it aloud here   
> https://cerealbaths.tumblr.com/post/617230562540830720/hi-i-wrote-a-thing-and-then-i-read-the-thing-if

They’d bought this decrepit trailer home six months back- or Redd had, anyhow. Because Redd did things like that, reckless stuff Lohn would never dream of doing. That’s the kind of person Redd was; Lohn figured that out long ago. He just had big dreams. Dreams bigger than either of their wallets’ faded squares in the back pockets of their Levi’s.

But the mobile home was gross, jus’ gross. Gross when they bought it and gross now. It’s only got the only one bedroom, thick dirty carpet, and maroon and cream striped wallpaper with little flowers up on the gaudy crown molding. Redd thought he could fix this place up and call it home, or at least give them a place to go between tours. The fixin’ up never happened, but he’d dropped thirteen grand on the place, so here they still are.

“Tourin’,” Redd drawls, one hand on his hip as the other stabs the bonfire of rotten leaves and beer cans. Embers flare up in little fireworks, popping in the stagnant air of late summer. 

“What about it?” Lohn takes a sip from his too-warm Coors Lite and watches Redd’s face in the rosey glow of the fire.

“We oughta,” Redd concludes, the pyromaniac inside of him satiated as he settles back into his camp chair. 

“Well,” Lohn begins, lets the thought drip to a close before it goes anywhere else. 

“Well, what?” Redd squints from behind his orange glasses. “Don’t you wanna?” 

Lohn frowns, shrugs halfheartedly, and says, “It’s not like you care if I want to or not. And take those glasses off, ‘s dark as hell out here.” 

“Keepin’ the smoke outta my eyes, man. Is that why you’re squintin’ over there? Lookin’ ready for a fight?”

“I ain’t ready for nothin’,” Lohn murmurs, voice low and melancholy. 

Cicadas scream into the lingering silence from the woods beside the trailer park. Soon, they’ll be hibernating, or dead, Lohn doesn’t really know what happens once the cold sets in, once again, but the duo has long since tuned them out. This summer has been long, and good, and kind, but the first day of fall is soon and apparently the good can’t last forever.

“And what do you mean I don’ care? I care like crazy ‘bout you, lightning,” Redd’s voice suddenly seems thunderous, like he’s competing with the bugs in the trees far beyond where the two are sat only two feet apart. 

“Shush,” Lohn bites, tossing his beer can into the grass. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Lohn,” Redd says firmly. “What’s with you, huh?

Lohn grits his teeth and stares directly into the fire, tries to let the smoke water his eyes before his body does it first. “Forget it.”

Redd’s got big dreams, Lohn reminds himself. Dreams bigger than this overgrown patch of grass and weeds. Lohn inhales, lets his head fall back, back far enough that his cowboy hat threatens to fall off, until he’s staring straight up at all the stars in the whole of space. They dance in the saltwater gathering in the corners of his eyes.

Redd moves, then, settles back, spreads his legs, and taps his thighs twice.

Lohn looks back down with wide blue eyes at the invitation, his mouth open in the smallest ‘o’. He pushes himself up and kneels into Redd’s chair, straddles him and sits back on his thighs. The camp chair groans with the stretch of canvas. 

Redd holds Link’s face in his palms and kisses Lohn chastley, only enough for Lohn to only miss the soft scrape of Redd’s mustache. “Better?” Redd breathes.

Link buries his face in Redd’s neck and frowns into the warm skin there. “I just don’t want to tour right now.”

“Used to love touring, used to love seeing people hear our music for the first time. Drove you wild, Lightnin’. Besides, if we tour more we can get a better place than this.”

Lohn sighs in admission and says, “At least out here we can  _ do _ this.”

Redd pauses, freezes his arms midway down Lohn’s back in a moment of clarity. “Damn, is that what this is about?” You don’t like tourin’ ‘cause I can’t love you like this on stage?” Redd presses his lips to Lohn’s neck and stays there long enough to feel the vibrations when Link responds.

“It’s not like that, Redd! I,” Lohn stumbles, caught up in the warm breath on his throat, “I like being here with you. Feels like we’re bein’ domestic, ‘n hell, I like it. But you always seem to be in a rush to end it.”

“You wait, darlin’, I’ll buy you a whole damn split level. We’ll have enough room for an above ground pool. Couple’a dogs…” 

Lohn shifts and flinches when the chair clicks under them. “Is that why you’re in such a rush?”

“That’s why I bought this shithole, why I drove us out to Los Angeles in the old van to perform on that mornin’ show. Everything I do, it’s so I can give you a life like that, Lohn.” Redd says, “and I’ll do it as long as the good lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.”

Lohn fights with the lump in his throat, twists his fingers into the soft fabric of Redd’s vest. “Okay. But we’re livin’ right now, Moonshine. Right now. If we don’t slow down we’ll miss it.”

Redd slides his fingers under Lohn’s button down and rests them on the small of his back. “No more touring until next year, then. County fairs are over anyhow. I’ll cancel the show at the apple orchard…”

“No, don’t cancel that,” Lohn runs his fingers over Redd’s beard, “I like the cider they give us.”

Redd grins. “Okay. I’ll save the apple orchard. Before that, can I take you out, Lohn? I wanna show you off, fronta’ God and everybody.”

“You’re gross when you’re drunk. Just stop actin’ like someone’s chasing you. We’re happy, Redd. let’s be happy for a little bit. You’re workin’ so hard to give me a life I want, well, I want this.”

Redd leans back and wraps his arms around the man in his lap, basks in the dying warmth of the fire. Lohn gives up on being comfortable and simply takes in the musky scent of his Redd. This patch of grass is theirs. These chairs, this fire, this single wide? Theirs. 

And suddenly, in the last light of the embers, they see the world like it’s endless and turning slowly, so slowly it seems perfectly content to be impossibly still. Lohn closes his eyes, tries to drown the cicadas with the sound of Redd’s pulse.


End file.
